Monica's Overcoat of Flesh E-Book

Geraldine Clarkson

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 62

Beschreibung

This remarkable debut collection from Geraldine Clarksoncontains the uncontainable; wondrous, spellbound and daring poems, happy to roam from South American monasteries to the shorelines of memory. These bold, often witty and always hawk-eyed poems survey matters of faith, tragedy and womanhood. Elaborate, skilful and formally audacious, Clarkson is a poet of extraordinary and kaleidoscopic vision; her writing always richly riotous with detail, her poems possessing the singular ability to move from the maelstrom of feeling to the stilled moment with an assured, quick elegance. "The speaker of these poems is endlessly morphable and endlessly verbal; she can say anything and beguile us into listening: put our screens down and really listen and come to life again in the garden of her diction, her memory, her weird unassailable vision." – Kathleen Ossip "... one of the finest contemporary practitioners of the prose poem. A mind-rattling, heart-shaking debut." – A.B. Jackson

Leseprobe

Monica’s Overcoat of Flesh

Monica’s Overcoat of Flesh

Geraldine Clarkson

ISBN: 978-1-911027-93-5

eISBN: 978-1-911027-94-2

Copyright © Geraldine Clarkson, 2020.

Cover artwork: ‘Class in Session’ (Charcoal on paper 28 x 40 inches), 2015 © Angela Dufresne. www.angeladufresne.org

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Geraldine Clarkson has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published May 2020 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

In memory of Frank, Frances, and Patrick Clarkson

and Matthew

~O~

Listen carefully... and incline the ear of your heart.

—Rule of St Benedict

A human being has so many skins inside, coveringthe depths of the heart.

—Meister Eckhart

Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?

—Elizabeth Bishop

Contents

[monikers]

Las Damas

Camelament

Novice’s Diurnal

Crenella’s Truth Tower

For our Extinguished Guests

Nuns Galore

Leonardo and the Birds of Clay

St Rose of Lima’s Revenge

Sin-Eating for Beginners

john brown’s

a young woman undressed me and

Catalina

Ironing Veils

Blue Robe

Mono

Days Round like the Moon

Homily of Francis

Leonardo and the Birds of Clay, Enclosed

[overcoat]

She’ll be Apples

Vault

Nuala, Nuala, Nightwatchman’s Daughter

girl

Monica’s Overcoat of Flesh

A Thursday

A Spat between Morning and Evening

À Vendre

A Less than Sainted Summer

Hasfallen

Mother’s Rue

Brother

The thing about Grace and Laura

Miss Marple loosens her bra,

The Very Skin that Hurts

My Mother, the Monsoon

Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra—Dalí, 1936

Love Cow

Macroglossia

Simplify the Universe with a Pie Chart

Les Molles

The dancers on graves

Bridal

[flesh]

She has the words—

RILT

skulker

Every Wednesday

Dora Incites the Sea-Scribbler to Lament

‘La Madre wants not to be in the sea—’

flotsam

Inis Ní

Quincing the Poet

His Wife in the Corner

Rebelade

All Souls’ Day, Masham,

neversaid

When tooraloos were taboo,

caress

Nutmeg, America

You taught me a new way of singing—

Biography

the last thing

Notes

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

[monikers]

Las Damas

The Ladies? I enquire gingerly, my first try, not remembering the more neutral word. But we are in the desert, a roadside café shack off the Panamericano. Out the back, someone motions. A wooden door whips open, caught by the wind, slams fast. Vast sands to left and right, nothing else—oh, but Mind the Dogs! someone calls.

Camelament

Listen, O daughter, give ear to my words:

forget your own people and your father’s house.

– Psalm 44 (45)

Whistle, chica.

Whisht. Give your ear

close and flutter. And flutter.

Eat in all you can hear.

Grow rotund on it, fit

as a fiddler’s wife’s

cat. There are other kinds

of right learning. Cause

you know. Cause you hear.

Bilge goes out with the suds.

A chain of Cheyennes

touches the lodge of

an enemy. You explode

flat on the floor. Fat

on fear. Flayed

with sharp, and hot, and not.

Novice’s Diurnal

The ritual of dressing: vest yourself

with shirt of hare, to keep you fleet

of heart, not bound to anyone.

Next, scapular, dyed marigold

to shun the sun; fuddle enemies

with poison-light. Belt of peacock

feathers, brilliant-eyed and trailing

emerald, to fetch a glance

around the forest; have folk staring

after. Dun stockings tricked out

with dog-rose and forget-me-not.

Clogs of cherrywood, carved, ideally,

by a first and lonely love. Eucalyptus

gloves to make your hands more apt

to heal and tease, caress, leave

trace. Velvet for your temples.

Raven-cap. And at your throat, a pendant,

turned from linnet-heart, half-ribbed,

to hop against your Adam’s apple whilst you

hum demented pilgrims back to life.

Crenella’s Truth Tower

She goes up each day to the tip of the tower and looks out

for Truth—ham-fisted intruder that he is, copper-buttoned,

careening through scratchy cornfields, slowing

at violet patches of heather, bee-sprung

and violent. He would shun her at first, shear her

to her underwear, that was clear. She had to make a

mental dance not to mind—not to quease at—

his undoubted clumsiness, upturning her routine,

maladroit for a season. Autumn is best—moist decay

twisting through brakes, summer tweeting its guts out.

Hildebilde, come hither, she calls her man-maid:

look, see, the horizon’s a prim rose drawing us in

to an adult colouring challenge. Amalgamate

to speculate. Seven varieties of untruth dwell in the castle,

subfunctional. The untruth dwells in hands, chins, cloaks,

misty cupboards, and on the breakfast bar. How is it

that the King, for all his corpulent confidence, cannot

curtail it and daily offers his daughter’s feigning hand

to good upright men, but few come, and when they do,

they turn ungood, subvert into their worst-version selves,

flannelled over in grey, with monkey motifs, clean

out of linen and riddling words. Manflux. Individuaries.

The Queen has the get-going-grey of a graceful elder whose

earnest purpose is to please, to turn the mirror otherwise

and away, casting her beholders in various grave but

gilding lights. Images lovely and undone. The hoolie hall

holds hallelujahs and woolly tunes for melodising

in the evening, when curtains are pulled, and rugs adjusted

to be safe from sparks.Who’ll do for you,

one of the soft men intones. The smells are trickery

twice round the block and into your nose with a

whisper and half a quart of cologne, piquant.

Back for a time and sunning itself in the old garden

like a pregnant baby blackbird, the grass hot and sappy,

Truth is touched.Only thee and me untouched!—

the Queen murmurs to a newcomer, lately come,

come long since. Her voice turns to a whisper:

Though I cannot completely vouch for thee...

For our Extinguished Guests

i.

So Mother Abbessdelays a few days in the selva,

adventures alongside the laity

in toucan-touched rainforests, tickled

by tigerlight striping her habit. She turns frissonista

at the thought of real terrorists laired up with jaguars

and monkeys; brushes breasts against copaiba,

pretty malva, thick-set cedar. Steers the tour-guide

past poisonous pencil snakes, then strikes out

for her own territory, the desert, and the slick

monastic show she runs on the skirts

of a shanty-town, at the edge

of a tip, rubbing shoulders with rubbish.

Presents her travelling companion—

ii.

the father. Clicked into guest-quarters,

he’s corn-fed and watered by pale nuns who

come and go with purple chicha, iced lemon,

and a yard broom to keep the steps clear

of sand; their eyes dart low, bright blue. He thirsts

for his arum lily, his daughter

transplanted, imagines her

growing twisted, amongst similar.

He asks questions, raises eyebrows

in Spanish, flicks copper roaches

from pillows. Ticks off gold mornings

throbbing with scarlet-tongued flowers. Activities

are arranged: the beach; Museum of the Sea. He glimpses her

three times a day through the grille.

iii.

The daughter, inside the enclosure, dreams

of peacocks and snow. Rises earlier, collides

with a junta of nuns who, as if playing chess, devise

urgent sweeping, singing, and scaling of fish;

keep her busy. No visits. His ticket expires.

Ceremonial farewells: they hug;